Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (38 page)

Of them all, only Talant Ypsir hoped he would fail to stop the impending war. Dumonia had been most specific about that point. Ypsir saw the destruction of the Confederacy, and perhaps the whole non-Warden branch of humanity, as something very much to be desired. He was assured of survival with his harem, and that was all that mattered to him. He did not consider the Altavar any threat, because they did not interfere with him or threaten what he considered important. In fact, to Talant Ypsir the entire alien race was just another tool against his enemies.

Ypsir held up a finger and grinned broadly, ever the jovial, friendly politician, only his incredibly cold eyes betraying anything of his inner self. “Wait here! I want to show you my most precious possession!” And, with that, he ducked from the room.

He heard the others whispering admiringly of what they knew was coming. But when Talant Ypsir re-entered, in spectacular fashion, he was aware that the eyes of the other Lords—Morah’s inhuman, burning orbs in particular—were all upon him and not on the newcomer to the room. To Ypsir, this was fun torture; to the others, it was very much a test of his own self-control and resolve. If he blew it now, there would
be
no tomorrow morning.

She was almost inhuman in her wild, exotic, sensuous beauty, far beyond the sketches he’d seen in Fallon’s office. Despite all his knowledge and feelings, he was almost overcome by wanton desire, by pure lust, and that, he realized later, was the key.

You must think of her as someone you do not know and have never met.

It was easier to do than he’d believed.

She entered on all fours, playfully tugging at a golden leash held by Ypsir, whose face showed absolute ecstasy and triumph. Ypsir was having a doubly fine time, not only tweaking this outsider’s nose and, by so doing, the Confederacy’s, but also showing off to the other Lords, his political equals, with an air of
I have her and you never can or will.

Ypsir and the girl halted just inside the entrance door, and she rolled over and then partly propped herself up on one arm, legs crossed, and looked up at them with those enormous green eyes, at once sexy and, somehow, wild as well.

She was, he thought lustfully in spite of himself, the ten best pornographic performances ever given all rolled up into one. She was quite literally
designed
to create instant envy and lust, and he could only stare at her. She looked straight into his face and there was no glimmer of any recognition at all, but there was a vibrancy, a fire in those eyes that was not in any of the Goodtime Girls.

Ypsir looked down at her with pride. “Tell the nice men your name,” he urged softly, as if talking to a trained animal or a child.

“I’m Ass,” she purred. “I’m a
baaad
Ass.”

“And why are you named Ass?”

” ‘Cause Ass was ‘sassin. Ass try to kill Master.”

He was under control now, perfectly so, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the others. They were still looking only at him.

“And what happened when you tried?”

“Master too smart. Master too wise for Ass. Master
so
generous. Master no kill Ass. Master no hurt Ass. Master make Ass
love
him. Master take ugly, evil ‘sassin, make into Ass, to love Master.”

Despite the depravity of the scene, this was becoming interesting, he thought. If they retold her that much, how much
did
she know of her former self? Not enough to recognize him, certainly. This was different from what he expected, yet it was consistent.
Ypsir wanted her to know.

“Do you remember who. you were?”

She looked slightly confused by that one. “Ass not ‘member old self. Ass no want to ‘member.”

“Are you happy now, Ass?”

“Oh,, yes!”

“Would you want to be anybody else—anybody or anything in the whole wide universe?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Ass loves being Ass. Feels
so
good.”

Ypsir looked up straight at him. “Your former agent.”

“Very creative,” he responded dryly, sipping at his drink. “And very lovely. Maybe we missed a bet, Lord Ypsir. Maybe we should have made
you
into a gorgeous beauty like that instead of sending you to Medusa. That’s what
you
would have done with you.”

Ypsir’s face clouded, and he literally shook with emotion, his inner self coming out in the twisting of his face, in his expression, in his every mannerism. It was a frightening, totally evil visage, a demonic creature that could no longer hide behind the mask of the cheery politician for very long.

He was about to add more, but felt Morah’s arm touch his and thought better of it. He’d done his job, and that was all that mattered, but he took a strong pleasure in twisting Talant Ypsir’s vision of beauty back upon him by applying the Medusan’s standards to himself.

Ypsir took a minute or-so to regain control, and slowly that terrible demon faded and the cheery politician was back with only a nasty leer remaining. He knew now, though, that he was in complete control, and his self-confidence, which had been badly wavering, flowed back into him in a grand surge. He also now knew that, while he still couldn’t believe in a god, he would always afterward believe in the existence of pure evil.

The rest of the evening was strained, but he found the right balance that not only Morah but the other Lords could approve. Not that Ypsir didn’t try, parading Ass, making her do pretty disgusting and degrading things, and pushing him as far as the Medusan could push using her, but to no avail. Ypsir fought his war with grand and ugly gestures; he fought back with sarcasm and flip comments, and totally frustrated the great Lord of Medusa. It was a very rare evening, really, he told himself, equally unpleasant, and rewarding.

Morah got him out of there as soon as dessert was finished, though. Ypsir would be boiling, horrible mad for hours after. Still, the Charonese was more than impressed by his behavior, and seemed to regard him even more as an equal now than before.

“He will kill you if and when he can,” Morah warned him. “Ypsir is not used to losing face so badly. Only the presence of the other Lords restrained him tonight, for his object is not ours.”

He nodded. “Shall we meet the Altavar now? I don’t care how foul they smell—they almost have to be a breath of fresh air compared to the company we’ve been keeping this night.”

“Come with me,” Yatek Morah said.

The smell
was
pervasive and pretty much as Morah had warned. On a full stomach it almost made him gag, and he restrained the impulse to do so only with the greatest difficulty and discomfort.

The Altavar were not quite what he expected. They bore a general kinship to the demons of the ice, but only a kinship, in the same sense that Ass was generically related to Commander Krega.

The first thing that struck him was the sheer alienness of the special quarters for the three Altavar. The lighting Was subdued, the furniture odd and blocky and totally unfamiliar in form or function, and there was an odd, figure-eight shaped pool of water to one side. He knew the creatures were watching him with interest, but he couldn’t really tell how. The retractable tentacles and odd, heart-shaped pads on their “heads” were familiar, but their bodies trailed into a large, nearly formless mass that seemed constantly in motion. They did not walk, but oozed as they moved, leaving a slender trail of slime behind them. Obviously none of these creatures could fly, or move very fast at all.

The one nearest to him and Morah moved to a small device and extended a flowing stalklike appendage until it reached the box and actually seemed to enter it through a small compartment on the side. A speaker crackled.

“So this is the one who caused so much trouble, Morah.” The voice, totally electronically synthesized, sounded eerie as the dank enclosure added reverb to its already inhuman tones.

Morah bowed slightly, although whether or not the gesture had any meaning to the creatures couldn’t be known. “He wished to meet you prior to the talks.”

“Why?”

The question seemed addressed to either one of them, and so he answered. “Partly curiosity. Partly to add to my knowledge. And partly because protocol demanded it.”

“Ah, yes, protocol,” the alien replied. “It seems important to your people.” It paused a moment. “You hold yourself well. In many ways you remind us of the one called Kreegan.”

“We were from the same place and in the same profession originally,” he told the Altavar. “I suspect we thought more alike than either of us would have admitted. You respected Kreegan, I know. I hope that I may earn a measure of that respect tomorrow.”

“You and he wished to save your people. This is a normal and natural thing to us, and we weakened out of our compassion. We hope sincerely that we did not err on that basis, for the cost will be far greater to you and infinitely greater to us if we did. It was our original intent, you know, to eliminate a number of your worlds in a carefully measured pattern so” that your technological capabilities would be broken for at least three centuries. This would have allowed us the necessary time to complete this phase of our task.”

He was appalled at this revelation, and the casual way in which it was delivered,’ appalled as Marek Kreegan must have been many years ago when, assuming his rank as Lord of Lilith, he had first met this or some similar Altavar. Say there were nine hundred human worlds, seven hundred of them the civilized worlds. Three billion per civilized world, and an average of a half-billion for the others, would be—The Altavar was talking about eliminating over one
trillion,
three hundred and twenty
billion
people! And now, the creature had said, the risk was far greater than that!

He drew in his breath and swallowed hard. “Let me get this straight. You wished to eliminate over a trillion of us so that we could not interfere with your activities for three centuries?”

“It has worked in the past,” the Altavar said calmly. “The last time we did not do it with a civilization it cost us dearly in time, lives, and materiel, and your own civilization is easily ten times the largest we have encountered before.”

So calm, so natural and normal, so clearly confirming much of his thesis about the Altavar and their motives.

“We hope that this time we may reason with your leaders, and avoid all war, but this may not be possible.” the creature continued. “We have studied your people well, and we understand you.”

“Do you, really? I wonder.” All he could see was not a terrible, gruesome alien form and stench, only an entire race of Talant Ypsirs, shorn of any need to be cheery, political, or human in any sense. The Medusans called them demons with no real understanding of how right they were.

“We know your concern,” the Altavar told him. “Once, you see, our race was much like yours. We grew from a single world not unlike your own, although, obviously, evolution took a different path. We breathe the same sort of air, we drink and are made up of the same water. Our cells would be understandable to your biologists. Only the most warlike, competitive races survive to expand, so do not think us any different from you there, either. We, too, had our empire of several hundred worlds. And when faced with threat, we, too, fought. Because our history is so much like your own, we know full well what your Confederacy will do, how it will behave. But we are far older than your kind. Our objectives have changed, our purpose is firm and sure, our entire race committed to a single set of goals and objectives, while yours exists only to exist and to no real purpose. We desire none of your worlds. We desire none of your territory, nor your people.

“But your people will never believe that, for they know no higher purpose. They will not accept, or countenance, our great task, nor understand it. This is sad, for if there was any way to avoid the spilling of blood we would do so. That, we think, is why we were willing to allow Kree-gan his chance. That and the fact that we had the luxury of time. We still have some time, but we fear his plan has achieved instead this current situation. Tomorrow we will begin to resolve it.”

He nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow. Thank you for speaking to me.” He looked at Morah, who nodded, turned, and walked out without another word. He followed, remembering that the Altavar didn’t stand on protocol.

It took a little while of breathing good air before his stomach would settle down enough to have any sort of conversation. Morah waited patiently for him to recover.

“Well, did you find any surprises in your pet theories?”

He thought a moment. “Yes and no. It depends on just how well that thing translates. I heard the right words, but words can mean different things to different people.”

“Tell me,” the security chief said, “just out of curiosity—and if you can without giving away your own position. Just why do you think that the Altavar are so obsessed with the Diamond?”

“Huh? I assumed it had something to do with reproduction, but if I heard that thing correctly it may not. What did I miss?”

Morah thought his answer over carefully. ‘Then my guess was correct. You are a good agent, Carroll, and you have the most brilliant deductive mind I have ever encountered, Kreegan included. Do not feel badly. You labor under a handicap impossible to overcome.”

“I knew I missed something—but you still haven’t told me what, yet.”

“I think not. Not at this time. If anything, the true answer would make even the slender hope of settlement impossible. Reproduction is a good theory, and you should stick with it. The Council will understand it, perhaps accept it, and it will do as a basis for negotiations. The true answer, however, they will never accept, for they share your fatal flaw—and mine, too, for I had to be shown to believe.”

He looked at Morah, frowning. “Then at least tell me the flaw.”

“These are aliens, Mr. Carroll. They are, as the old one said, far closer to us than their hideous appearance and smelly hides admit, but they are alien all the same. They were shaped by a history that went vastly different from ours, and they reacted in a way, I suspect, that we could not. It should be obvious that their values, their institutions, their way of looking at things is very different from our own and would require a mind-wrenching adjustment to understand.”